New facilities for the MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aircraft are planned for
Ethiopia, and bases will be expanded in the Seychelles and Djibouti, a tiny
country on the Red Sea.

The drones have a maximum range of more than 3,600 miles, meaning that they
can easily be launched deep over Somalia or Yemen, carry out missions and
return to base.

They are the same aircraft used by the Royal Air Force in attacks against
the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Washington's decision to increase its use of the unmanned "hunter-killer"
drones illustrates its concern that anti-Western terror organisations could
spread in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian peninsular.

"It's a conscious recognition that those are the hot spots developing right
now," a former senior US military official told The Washington Post.

There are fears that Western strikes against al Qaeda in Pakistan and
Afghanistan are pushing the network's focus further west, to East Africa in
particular.